Hippie Daze
by Serinity46
Summary: When an amnesiac K9 ends up in a fan's living room, they soon find themselves in the Summer of Love in NYC. Will she end up finding the Doctor? And when she does, that's only just the beginning for Shar and them... Self-insert OC, K9, Ten, Donna.
1. Sharada

It was late Friday or early Saturday, sometime in the middle of autumn, and around 1am in western Canada, when Sharada Storm got up off her seat on one of her family's couches and pushed the square button on the bottom of the large TV in her living room to turn it off. She turned to go over to flick off the lights in the living room next, though, as usual, she went for the wrong ones first. Yes, her family had been living in this house for a little over 11 years, since, as she was currently nineteen, the summer before she turned eight, but there were so many different switches for different lights in the large living room that she still just usually guessed through them until she hit the right one.

Heading back, the room now nearly dark after finding the right light switch a little ways down the stucco-esque gold-colored wall, she scooped up her still-on laptop, which she'd been writing some fanfic or another on, during the commercial breaks, that was perched on the arm of the blue couch, and made to head to her bedroom.

Sharada got so far as the side table when something made her pause. Something really freaking odd, that is. In the center of the peach carpeted living room, something quite familiar to Sharada appeared to be whirring around cutely; a metal dog, which had definitely never been there before. She knew who it was at once of course, she'd just seen him in the Classic Who episode on TV, though for a moment just stood there blinkingly in the surrealness of it all. _K9 was... real?  
_

"Oh my God... K9?" Sharada whispered, laptop still in hand, as she moved closer to him, a look of utter shock on her face. "Aww, aren't you cute… What are you doing here? Don't you belong to Sarah Jane, or Romana, or Leela… or…_ someone_?" That someone being a _fictional_ _character_, she thought, the fact that, even though she'd hoped, dreamed, and wished it so as much as any other avid fan, Doctor Who was real still sinking in.

"Negative, mistress." K9 said, wheeling closer to Sharada as she kneeled down level with him.

"But how did you get here? You just… appeared, here in my house. Did someone send you here on purpose…" Sharada asked the robotic dog, pausing slightly when something else occurred to her. "Or by accident?"

"I do not recall how…" K9 bowed his head, looking almost as if he were sad. Shar couldn't help feel sorry for the thing, who sounded as if he had as little idea how he ended up in BC Canada in 2008 as she did.

"Aww…" She petted him comfortingly on his metallic head, which he responded well to, perking up at her affection. He may have been a robot, but a lost dog was still a lost dog, Sharada thought. "Do you remember anything, though, about where you were before you got here?"

"There is no memory of it, mistress. There appears to be a block in my programming preventing knowledge of that." He told her, searching unsuccessfully inside his own wiring for any recollection of events.

Something began to click in Sharada that either he had malfunctioned, or, more likely, someone had blocked off a part of his knowledge on purpose. She rested her hand fondly atop the back of his head. Unless the Doctor miraculously showed up in her living room as well, there was none too much that she could do for him in terms of the block.

"You know, someone else, probably Sarah Jane, is probably your real mistress, so you don't really need to call me that if you don't want to." She told K9 kindly. "You still can if you'd like, but my name's Sharada…Sharada Storm, actually."

"Affirmative, mistress Sharada." K9 said quirkily.

"Oh, _you_!" Sharada squeeled, one hand still cupping her laptop, the light of it illuminating a small amount of her living room, reached her free arm around him in adorability for 'the shooty dog thing', as he had once been called. "I can't believe it's _you_... _here_!"

K9 had just been about to say something when he recognised a slightly familiar sensation. Sharada felt it too, it was like a bit of a pulling, with a sight spinning feel… it lasted for less than a second.

"What was…?" She began to ask, then trailed away, looking about. Her surroundings were different, much different. She still had one hand on the metal dog and another holding her computer, but she was definitely not in her house anymore, it was somewhere paved…a street…no, an alley near to a street. Sharada got up from the asphalt, looking around in surprise and awe.

She could see that they were in some kind of city somewhere, and the people and cars passing by, they looked very…hippie. Like they'd gone back in the past, somehow.

"K9, where are we?" She asked him, curiously.

He paused for a moment before answering her, as if computing something to get the location.

"Earth, 1967…New York City." K9 told her finally.

"The 60's?" Sharada beamed, ecstatically. "Really, we're in New York, in the 60's, like in Across the Universe?! This is _so _great, I've _always_ wanted to see what it was like back then! And 'Sharada'…that already sounds a bit flower child, doesn't it?" She laughed, thinking of her unusual name... which nearly _everybody _who heard it seemed to want to know 'the story behind', for some reason. Almost to the point of annoyance.

She then took notice of the black and silver Dell laptop which was still open in her hand.

"And I'm carrying around a machine that won't be invented for another 30 years…and traveling with a robotic dog from a TV series…well aren't I inconspicuous?" She laughed, finally shutting off and folding over the screen to both save power and make it less noticeable and easier to carry.

"You are taking this all very well, mistress." K9 piped up.

"Well there's no point getting upset or freaking out about it, it's not like that's going to do anything to help. I'm here in two places I've always wanted to see, the 60's and New York, so I might as well enjoy it!" Sharada told him, happily. "And, my mom's never been to New York and I don't think my Dad really has either, so there's no chance at all of me meeting them and accidentally fucking up time or something."

"And what about getting back to 2008?" He asked her.

"The Doctor." Sharada said, confidently. She'd _better_ find the Doctor, because, though she was thrilled at the unexpected time/space travel, she didn't intend to be stuck back here forever. "Because if you're real and here, that must mean he's got to be existing as well. All I have to do is find some way to find him, and with the whole traveling around in time thing, it shouldn't be that long before I come across some version of him, right?"

Sharada knew that his early forms were originally around sometime in the 1960's, and she could think of at least two or three different instances from Cannon alone where the Tenth Doctor had ended up sometime during the 60's, and who knows if he'd ever stopped off here at some point that wasn't included in an episode. Plus, the whole time travel thing made it possible that she could even end up coming across, like, some unknown 12th Doctor or something.

"And when I do find him, we left my house in the middle of the night, which means I've got a space of about 10 hours for the TARDIS to land in before anyone misses me and notices I'm gone." She finished. "I am _not _having a Rose Tyler thing where people think I'm missing for a year. That is _so_ not happening."

As she walked out of the short alleyway and officially out into the mix in New York City, 1966, Sharada took notice of the fact that she wasn't actually wearing any kind of shoes, but still the pair of black and green striped socks she'd been wearing earlier. _Oh well_, she thought, _at least_ _I'm wearing normal clothes, and not PJs or something. _Not having a pair of shoes or sandals was really the least of her problems, and she thought it wouldn't really matter that much, being the 60's and all.

Really feeling that she should get a bag to put the laptop in so people didn't see it, Sharada's gaze locked onto a vendor not too far away and she went in the direction of the street stall. It wasn't much different from the kind she had seen during Hippie Daze in Kitsalino, Vancouver in 2006 that one time, only this was the real thing.


	2. Helter Skelter

Once at the street stall, Shar remembered one other very important thing which went along with having no shoes or belongings other than the laptop in her hand and the clothes on her back… she also had no money. Not that, if she had had any on her, it would actually be that smart of a thing to be handing them Canadian coins and bills dated several decades in the future, anyways… and she was certain that it wouldn't be a good thing at all to try to use an interact card either, had she had hers on her, since, she could be wrong, but she didn't think that they had debit machines or anything like that during the 1960's.

The sidewalk stand itself looked exquisitely into it's time, though it was the young woman who ran it who gave it that certain earthy, peaceful air.

"See anything you like?" the vendor spoke from behind her as Sharada looked at the many macramé and beaded hemp bags for sale. K9 stood closely to Sharada, but was knowingly keeping himself quiet an unnoticeable.

"They're so pretty... how much are they?" Shar asked, motioning slightly at the totes.

"Oh…I dunno, maybe five dollars?" the seller said loosly, brushing her right hand absently through her long, thick, darkish warm honey brown curls. She slightly adjusted her white cloth headband after doing so, then looked back at Sharada.

"Oh… I'm kind of broke." Sharada admitted, making a certain expression which she'd grown to do a lot… the kind which read 'well I'm just fucked, aren't I?' with a huge bit of laughing at her situation.

"Ooh, well that don't matter if you ain't got money." The vendor looked doe-eyed and optimistic. "Because no one's totally broke, even if they've got no money… I can trade for something if you've got anything… artwork, food, beads, whatever."

"I don't have anything, at all." Sharada shook her head. "Sorry…"

Shar had nearly turned to leave in search of some money, or something to draw with or trade, when the vendor spoke again.

"Sorry to hear, but you will, sometime… you've got talent in your eyes, I can see it," She affixed her eyes, the color of an almond Hershey's bar, and which seemed to make her age unpinpointable, upon Sharada's own dark green ones. It was almost… Trelawney-like for a moment, as if the vendor was also a carny fortune teller.

The young woman spaced in a daze for a moment, gazing past Sharada and to the clear blue sky, before reaching into an alcove in the stand.

"I can't sell you one of those, but…" the vendor produced a large, slightly worn, white macramé tote bag. The beading was in a few shades of blue, and was a string of small and large abstract circles of different sizes along the rim. "I can just give you this one. It's used, but it'll do fine, they hold up pretty well."

Oh, wow, thanks. Really, that's... wow," Sharada thanked her, surprised as she was not expecting this kind of generosity at all. She discreetly slipped her laptop into the tote.

"It's no problem. I make them all anyways." She shrugged. "I'm Seychelle, by the way…Seychelle Sequoia…hmm, that's not too far off from your name, is it…an 'S' also, right? A lot of 'S's?"

"Yeah, Sharada Shannon Storm, but how'd you guess that?" Shar looked very surprised at this, and maybe just the slightest touch of suspicious as she backed up a step.

"Dunno…" Seychelle shrugged honestly. "You just seemed like the kind of person who fits the letter 'S', that's all."

"I didn't know there _were_ kinds of people who fit different letters…?" Sharada asked, curiously. She'd supposed she really did fit with the letter 'S', after all, loads of other names she liked started with that letter. She'd always kinda liked the name 'Serena', if she had a girl, someday, and she kept giving a lot of characters in her stories names which started with an 'S', also.

"Of course there are," Seychelle told her, matter-of-factly. She pointed to a petit girl with choppy chin-length ash-blonde hair who was sitting just down the street on a bench, eating some fast food fries. "See her? Well she's a common 'A', definitely an Ashley or an Anne or something like that, but she'd also fit well into being a cute 'N', something pixie-like. She probably has a nickname that starts with the letter 'N'."

Sharada had no idea how Seychelle was doing this, though, she did seem kind of right in thinking that those names or letters fit the girl.

"Go on, see for yourself," Seychelle waved Sharada off at the direction of the 'A' or 'N' sitting on the city bench a few shoplenghts down the sidewalk. "I swear I don't actually know her or anything."

Sharada did just so, coming up to the girl with some really stupid question about where to buy food here. As it turned out, after ending up talking with the pixie-like blonde for about 10 minutes, she was from Ireland, just came to New York about a week ago, and her name _was_, surprisingly enough, Ashleigh … Ashleigh Collins, though, also amazingly, she told Sharada that sometimes people called her Nymph, and had for ages.

"You're like, freaking_... psychic_!" Shar said, amazedly, to Seychelle, after talking with Ashleigh/Nymph.

"Oh…maybe," Seychelle said, unbothered, blinking her eyes as she watched Ashleigh/Nymph board a bus. "But it's not that hard, you try."

"OK, um…" Sharada looked around until she spotted someone to guess on, a few shops up in the opposite direction from the bench which Ashleigh had been on. "That guy sitting against the wall there, with the dreads and the guitar. He looks a bit like Jason Castro from American Idol, so…'J'? And the girl next to him, she kinda reminds me of someone I-"

"No, no you're doing it wrong," Seychelle shook her head. "It's not about who they look like that you know, you just sort of have to get a feel for their aura, sense them out, be one with it… and what's American Idol?"

"Oh... ok… Well do it again, then." Sharada encouraged Seychelle. She doubted that she could actually do it herself no matter how much she sensed out someone, but it was interesting watching Seychelle get these right. "Pick out someone else out there's name."

Seychelle scanned the psychedelic street. It wasn't really crowded in the modern-day New York sense, but there were still plenty of people on it anyways. She locked her eyes onto a woman across and down the street on the sidewalk opposite to the one which Sharada and herself were on.

"Ok… right there, the redhead by the café window, the one turned around talking to that man in the suit; I think she's probably -" Seychelle began.

"a 'D'. Donna." Shar said automatically, her expression agape while everything inside her leapt in an 'ohmyfuckinggodit_is_them!' kind of way. _The Doctor and Donna…. right across down the damn street_! _I knew it!_

"See, you are getting this!" Seychelle said, enthusiastically.

"No, I'm not," Sharada shook her head. "It's just that I know who she is, and who he is, the Tenth Doctor, with Donna Noble…_here_, _now_!"

Some high-pitch squeely noise also left Sharada as she did a really ferrety jumpy thing on the spot for a second, adding in some short claps with her hands, then letting out another thrilled fansqueel, her face in an expression of pure squee.

"It's been really great meeting you, thanks for the bag, maybe I'll see you again sometime." Sharada said very quickly and happily to Seychelle, who was looking at Sharada in the most perplexed way, at a loss for what the girl was getting so boundfully excited about. Sharada then nudged K9 with her foot. "Come on."

"You see, what did I say, I'd find him, and it's been all of about _twenty minutes _of being here, and there, right there, is the Doctor," Sharada told K9 as she hurried across the street in a kitty-corner direction. "_With_ Donna. I'm going to get to meet both of them, this is _awesome_!"

Halfway across the street, basically in the middle of the road (which, thankfully and luckily, didn't really have all too much traffic), she heard a mechanical whirring, like something being charged up, coming from nearby her feet. Sharada looked down at K9. He'd stopped and was sort of… rattling.

"Mistress…" K9 looked up at her as the charging sound grew. "I cannot contain… will… must…"

"What? What is it?" Sharada bent down to the side of him, concerned. "Is something wrong with you?"

A bursting jet of red light shot from his front, connecting with and shattering the window of a record store, sending glass shards flying and setting off a chain of surprised and scared screams from those who saw it. Sharada was surprised as well.

"What did you do that for? There's nothing there, It's just a window!" Sharada looked in the direction of the destroyed shop window. K9 shot out another beam, singeing part of a wooden bench, and another which made sparks go a fly as it hit a coke machine. "S_top shooting at everything_!"

"Mistress, I cannot control…" K9 strained out as he blasted a hole in a parked car's door.

"What do you mean you can't control it?!" Sharada asked, in a panicked kind of way, but also noticing the panel of buttons and the small screen on a part of his back. "_Come on_, you're going to hurt someone if you keep doing that… is there some button or something that gets you to-"

"…Negative… I have lost all ways of stopping… mistress." K9 said, painedly, shooting out a jut of red which shattered apart the large glass window of the café. Shar was thankful he hadn't yet hit a person; she had no idea what setting he was shooting on, other than something pretty damned powerful. Looking back in that direction, towards where the Doctor and Donna were, she did the only obvious thing to do.

"_DOCTOR_!!" Sharada felt a sort of a thrill at this, her, a fan, being in some crazy mad situation where she was yelling out the Doctor's name. A thrill which lasted all up until about a second later, when K9 turned, bearing at Sharada in a possessed manner, laser lock and loaded.


	3. You & You & Me

"Oh you are _so_ not going to shoot me." Sharada, her stance poised into something very Charlie's Angels-esque, glared determinedly at K9. Without another second, in the midst of saying those words, she spun on the ball of her left foot, delivering a swift low-aimed spinning side kick to the side of K9's head with her right leg.

Caught off the way, his direction suddenly changed by the force of the kick, K9's beam instead connected with the side of another car, doing nothing more than blasting a hole through part of the trunk. As the jet hit the car, Shar, by the force of the spinning kick, arrived more or less back in her original position, unharmed (and honestly feeling quite proud of herself…thank you very much, martial arts all through high school). She rushed to get to where she was facing the non-laser end of K9, and was joined by a blur of brown along with a whip of red out of the side of her eye.

Sharada heard the familiar whir of the Sonic Screwdriver and looked upon the now-dormant tin dog, and then over to the Doctor, relieved… relief which was being taken over by squee. _She was actually near the Doctor…_ _Oh my fucking god, the Doctor, and her, standing, right here, in the same place, just…_

She let out a short, ecstatically high-pitched sound that was something like 'Eeeee!!', beaming beyond belief. And the Doctor was now looking at her with some confusion, as if she were crazy… great.

"You two know each other?" Donna asked, motioning between Sharada and the Doctor, picking up on both Sharada's 'omfg! The Doctor!' air and the fact that Sharada had called out his name moments earlier.

"No," Sharada shook her head quickly before the Doctor could respond to this question. "I know _about _him, a lot about him, and you, and…I sound like a stalker, don't I?" Sharada broke off, half-cringing. "I'm a fan, a huge fan." She finally said, hoping they'd get it. "You're my favorites, Ten and Donna, I love you two! I just watched you two today, actually."

"_Oh_…a _fan_," the Doctor's look was in a dawning comprehension. "Well that explains it."

"You know about fans? People who watch the show?" Sharada asked, glad he knew what the hell she was on about with the whole 'knowing about him' thing. She was a bit surprised, though.

"Well, yeah… where do you think Attack of the Graske came from?" He said, lighting up at this. "Oh, it's great to be meeting a real fan in person! Because that was that was all just through remotes and keypads, I never actually saw anyone face up like this…"

"I actually did good on that one! Yeah, I found it online. Which was kinda surprising, cuz I'm just _crap_ at the other Who games on the site; especially that one where I'm controlling this cartoon you, in the heart of the TARDIS and I've got to jump you between these platforms and over Slitheen or whatever… I'm glad that's not real life, cuz I'd've killed you off, like, five times just in the first level," Sharada admitted.

While Sharada and the Doctor just sort of stared at each other for a few seconds, Donna, picking up the beaded bag that she'd seen Sharada drop a few moments ago when everything was getting shot at, glanced down towards the tin dog near their feet; its ears were starting to twitch around.

"I don't mean to interrupt the whole 'I can't believe the other one exists' thing you're both doing, but the laser dog thing's moving again." Donna pointed out.

"Right, thought that wouldn't last for long…" the Doctor quickly bent to a kneel near K9, whipping out his-

Shar burst into a small spurt of laughter, kneeling on the other side of K9, as she eagerly watched him. He looked over at her, a curious expression of 'what?' written on his face. Sharada just shook her head, curly waves of her long, thick, golden-brown hair flying about, and saying the word 'nothing' whist her eyes and amused smile read something completely different.

"The glasses?" Donna, also knelt down, beside the Doctor and opposite to Sharada, mouthed to her, jutting her hand in indication.

Sharada nodded furiously. "_Every time_!" She mouthed back in some amused expression. She was actually watching the Doctor do something she'd seen a thousand times in the show… but live. _This is so crazy... I love it._

"I know!"

An impish thought crossed Sharada's mind on the topic as she remembered something from Time Crash, which she didn't think Donna knew.

"You know he doesn't even need them…" Sharada whispered to her across K9, pausing at Donna's interested "Really?". "Yeah, he just does it to look smart."

"_Oh my god_!" Donna gaped, having, as Sharada suspected, not known this before now.

"It is kinda sexy really though…." Sharada shrugged, looking dreamily back over at the Doctor as he did whatever it is he was doing with two wire bits, the sonic screwdriver, and the keypad on K9's back.

"Him? Sexy?" Donna smiled, amused, and giving a slight roll of her eyes.

"Yeaahh, he is!" Sharada nodded in an exaggerated 'it's obvious!' kind of way.

The Doctor, completely oblivious to the near-silent exchange about him which just took place, looked up from K9, replacing his glasses back into one of his pinstriped pockets.

"The blaster's fixed, dunno why K9 just went berserk like that…he hasn't been possessed by something, has he? You haven't seen any weird white fuzz or big prawns around…?" He asked, sort of pausing for a moment, as he looked to Shar, in search of something that didn't come to mind and realizing what it was. "I didn't get your name, did I?"

"No, you didn't… it's Sharada… Sharada Storm. Shar, mostly… most people call me Shar," She smiled, about two seconds away from starting to do the 'I'm _actually near the Doctor and Donna'_ squealey-thing again. "I can't believe you're really real, this is _amazing_."

"How did you get to the 60's?" Donna asked Shar, suddenly. "…you're from about 2008, aren't you? Sometime in... November?"

"Yeah, I am." She nodded. "How'd you know?"

"It was a complete guess, really," Donna shrugged. Aside from the obvious thing about that Sharada's been online, meaning that she was probably at least from the new millennium or the late nineties, there was nothing particularly striking about Sharada's appearance in striped socks, a pair of jeans, and a hooded long-sleeved top (red, with vintage varsity type of design on the chest) which really pinpointed her being from any particular date or month around that decade, really…it was just the first thing that popped into her head.

"Yeah, how _did_ you know that?" the Doctor looked at Donna, surprised. "Because that's impressive, that's…I couldn't even pick out the _exact month_ she's from…"

"Well, I don't know. It just sort of came to me, is all," Donna said. She didn't think it was that big of a deal that she'd gotten it right, considering the girl was from the same year as she was. "You can tell the year of things we land at all the time, I don't know why it's so shocking that I-"

She broke off. In the blink of an eye, the city street vanished, replaced before them suddenly with someplace small and dark, and, with a quick glance, about the size of a small closet and walled in on all sides.

"What the hell was that?" Donna said aloud as they stood up, looking about at their new surroundings.

"Seriously? Again?…where is this now?" Sharada wondered, towards K9.

"Since when does K9 do teleport?" the Doctor wondered, looking between Sharada and the tin dog that they'd all each had some part of their body touching a few seconds ago. "No, wait…since when do _you_ even have a K9? I don't' recall sending out a mass order of real live working ones to all the fans out there."

"Oh… so that's how you got from 2008 to the 60's, wasn't it?" Donna realized.

"Yeah…it was," Shar answered, her nose suddenly scrunching as she smelt something god-awful. It reminded her a little of the fumes from the headache-inducing paint that her dad had used to re-do the laundry room around six months back. It was making her head spin. "Oh my god… what _is _that… it's like … ugh... Doctor…"

Shar felt unusually dizzy and weak the more she breathed in whatever the hell that was and stepped around to the other side of K9, swaying clumsily into the Doctor. It was rapidly getting harder to even think properly… to stay awake… she tried to force herself to, her surroundings beginning to blur into a haze as she pressing her face against the right side of his chest to keep from inhaling this crap, which was only slightly more successful.

"Well don't just stand there looking concerned, Doctor, do something before we pass out, yeah?" Donna, feeling more or less in the same drowsy spinning fog as Sharada as the thick stench filled the air, held loosely to the Doctor on his other side.

He _was_ doing something, which was just slightly more difficult with trying to support the two increasingly drowsy people that were leaning into either side of him, he was doing the usual standby of 'sonic the hell out of whatever the problem is' and aiming it at a small sprinkler-like object on the roof of the closet-sized space. With a small popping and sparking sound like a light bulb shorting out, the gas ceased to pour out, beginning to rapidly subside.

"Now that that's over…" the Doctor watched the remainder of the gas filter back out through a small air vent. "Are you two ok?"

"Huh…?" Sharada, awake, but very barely, murmured against him, the sound of him beginning to sound not so distant. She lifted her head, the sleepy spinning haze through her body starting to go away. "What the hell would we do if you didn't have that thing?" She breathed in relief, looking at him, gratefully, with an amused smile as her feeling of woozy tiredness faded the more she breathed the normal air again.

"We'd've probably woken up locked in a cell or tied up to something… the gas was harmless, just supposed to knock us out for a bit," The Doctor, still supporting the rousing frames of Shar and Donna, told them.

"It didn't seem to do anything to you," Donna, still holding to near his shoulder, but mostly recovered, noticed, looking at him with a sort of curious look.

"Time Lord, different biology… it would've in a few more minutes," The Doctor answered, then, fairly sure that both Donna and Sharada were fine now, spun to face the wall behind him and pressed an ear against it. "Now, getting out of here… because if I'm right, and they, whoever 'they' is going to end up being, this time, did that to move us to someplace else, there has to be a way out… because there's _no_ chance in _any_ possibility that we'd all be still holding onto K9 after that; that would just be a _really_ stupid plan if they were going to bank on the teleport again to get us to wherever they wanted… mind you, the average alien force/megalomaniac hell-bent on taking over the world _does _tend to overlook things a lot, but still.."

The Doctor, scanning up and down the wall with the sonic screwdriver, bent lower and back to a kneel until he settled it on one spot for a moment. He grinned, as a quiet grinding sound like a cog hissed out, and the wall began to lift up from the floor, coming to a halt at the point where it left about a two foot gap in-between the floor and the 16-inch thick cement wall.

The moment it started to rise, K9 wasted no time in wordlessly scuttling out through the gap. As Donna and Sharada crouched back on the floor beside the Doctor, the heavy wall wavered dangerously, swiftly dropping down a noticeable inch or two.

"But that'll just drop on top of us…" Donna looked at the long slab of cement, uncertainly, as it shuddered down about a centimeter or so, trembling as if it couldn't hardly stay up any longer.

"Not if we're fast," The Doctor said, quickly rolling under it. As the last millimeter of him cleared through to the other side of the gap, the wall thundered down, closing with a sudden bang before any of them could do anything.

"I told you that would happen," Donna yelled exasperatedly across the thick cement wall to the Doctor. "Doctor, get it open again!"

"I'm trying to," Donna and Sharada could hear the Doctor yell back, muffled by the 16 inches of pure concrete between them and him. They heard the faint hum of the sonic screwdriver for the third time since arriving in this building-place. "There should be another control panel on this side, if-"

Whatever the Doctor was going to say was cut off by the sound of a beam being shot, much like K9's blaster, followed by a sudden human-sized thud hitting the floor.

"Doctor…. What happened?_ Doctor!?"_ Sharada yelled through the cement, her face as near to it as possible, trying to hear any sounds. There was no reply.

"_Doctor!!"_ Donna tried, giving the wall a pound…still no answer. "If you can hear us at _all_, it wouldn't hurt to give answer…"

Not a single sound was heard on the other side of the slab of cement. They glanced over at each other, silent, Donna's expression agape with shock.

"Is he… did that dog-thing…?" Donna finally managed to say, fearing the worst.

"No, he can't be… there's different settings, he could just be stunned…" Sharada desperately tried to think of any other possibility. _This is so my fault…_

"It's not," Donna said to Sharada, absently fingering the beadwork on Sharada's bag, which lay on the floor, somewhere between them, laptop still inside.

"What's not?" Shar asked, distractedly, trying to hear anything else coming from the other side of the thick wall.

"Your fault; it's not your fault that we're here and any of this is happening," Donna assured her. She could tell, by the way the fan was looking, how guilty she felt, if anything had happened to the Doctor.

"I swear it's like you're reading my mind or something," Sharada muttered, in slight surprise to her, feeling less to blame, though. She rested a hand upon her bag, which she'd actually forgotten about, just a bit. "I was just thinking that, about it being my fault… but you do, anyways; you say a lot of things that the some of the people watching are thinking."

"Really? I do? Like what?" Donna asked the fan, curious.

"I don't know _exactly_, but just random things. You _do_," Shar insisted. '_Does that mean we're locked in?'_, from Planet of the Ood,came to her mind first, but there had to be something better than that to use as an example…

"Well, he did lock us in, anyone would've- Oh my god… you know that whole mind-reading thing you just said?" Donna broke off, as soon as she realized that she was replying, just then, to something that Shar had thought, rather than said aloud. "I know I can be, I dunno, _intuitive_, sometimes… but right now it's like I'm flipping psychic."

"Wow, seriously? That's crazy… really? You can tell what I'm thinking?" Sharada was surprised. And a little worried; she'd always kind of hated the thought of anybody being able to hear what she was thinking, no matter who they were, and how much she trusted them. I _was_ just a little cool, though, she had to admit. Very 'Heroes'.

"Not all the time, not before, just… now. Oh this is weird," Donna said aloud. It wasn't so much as reading Shar's mind as she was picking up on the things which the fan was thinking… but it was _nothing_ she'd done before. Ever. Not on her own, anyways, there'd been the Ood, and the TARDIS, and all of that, but that was different, there'd been reasons for that, but this was just plain weird. "_How _am I doing this, again?"

"No idea…" Shar was at a loss. "This is so crazy…"

Suddenly, a noise could be heard on the other side of the wall, that of heavy boot steps, coming closer.


	4. FTW

They fell silent, abandoning the mind-reading thing for a moment, as the sound of clanking booted footsteps echoed through the room on the other side of the wall. Both pressed close to the concrete wall, hearing an unfamiliar male voice.

"Good dog," The dark voice said, his footsteps growing louder to Sharada and Donna as he drew closer to the wall. "He's alive, too… good shot."

At hearing this, Sharada beamed, bouncing silently on the spot a bit. She'd totally lost her head about that, of course they wouldn't have K9 kill the Doctor, he'd said that whoever was behind this wanted them alive for some reason.

Two other pairs of lighter sounding, but still clunky, footsteps sounded through the room, engaging in an obviously whispered conversation with the first man that neither of them could make out, no matter how much their ears were pressed against the cold cement. After that, the two newcomers left, presumably carrying off the Doctor.

"So where are his friends, you… did they escape, are they still in there?" the original dark-voiced man kicked at the side of K9, directing this question towards him.

"I will not betray mistress…" K9 struggled out.

"Betray? Ha! You think you haven't already done that, shooting him, bringing them here… what about when I made you start blasting apart the street, huh?" the man growled angrily at K9. "You will _do as I say_, you bloody dumb metal computer!"

A wild thought crossed Donna's mind. So she could read minds now, for some reason…whatever the hell that was, but did she actually have to be looking at the person to do that…? She tried to focus in on the man, trying to get a sense of what he was thinking, his plans… she'd only just gotten so far as a number (3,4,10) when an abrupt shock threw her off, like a heavy static electricity spark in her head.

"Augh…" She drew back, her eyes shut and mouth open, wincing in surprise and pain, automatically drawing her hands up to her head in anguish.

"Donna…?" Sharada whispered, at her side, Shar's own thoughts at this brief moment a continuous string of 'ohcrapohcrapohcrap!'. "Are you ok? What's wrong? What's…?"

Donna, breathing in a furied way, but no longer feeling whatever the hell that was all about, looked at Sharada, giving her a small nod which meant she was now.

"Oh my _god_…" Donna whispered, outraged. "When we get out of here, because we are _so_ getting out of here, he is _so_ going to pay for that!"

"What did he do?" Sharada asked. "You were all…Jean Grey…for a second…?"

"You're a bloody fan of everything, you…" Donna noted. "I was trying to read his mind, find out what the hell this was all about, but it was like he _knew_ I was trying to and forced me out. Painfully, I might add…" Her eyes flickered in annoyance in the direction of the man on the other side of the wall.

"So he can do it too? The whole psychic thing?" Sharada realized. _What if he's been reading our thoughts this whole time…?_

"I wouldn't put it past him, no." Donna said, standing very close to the wall again trying to hear anything happening on the other side, agreed with what Shar had just thought.

"I know you're in there… both of you," The man growled again, his clanking, heavy, footsteps drawing very close to the wall between them. "The heap of _scrap_ refuses to say, but you're right…I can read your thoughts."

The wall lifted open to its full height of about five and a half feet. As the man, revealed now to be on the heavyset side, about on the older end of middle aged, came through the gap, hardly having to duck much as his head only missed clearing it by about two or three inches, Donna and Sharada quickly backed into either side of the small, closet-sized space.

"Every thought, every memory… and I can also, should you be trying to stop me…" the man turned swiftly to face Donna, his back to Shar, a look of menace and fiendish glee on his face. "…Do this."

"You… fucking… wanker…" Donna gritted, cringing as her head fired again with sharp, sudden white-hot pain. "…What the hell did you do to the Doctor?"

"Hmm…the Doctor, is he?" the beefy man let up on what he was inflicting on her at this, smirking.

"Oh, you _know _he's the Doctor." Donna shot back, calling the man out on his ridiculous act. She didn't even have to read his mind to know _that_ piece of obviousness. And if he was going to play stupid instead of coming out and telling her what the hell this was all about, well, she'd just have to find out for herself…

"How many times until you just give up with it, already?" The man exasperatingly glared at Donna as he sent her into another throe of pain the second he sensed what she was doing again.

"Stop it, leave her alone!" Sharada, taking up on some impulse brought from this one old spy show she used to watch when she was younger, the thing that they'd do all the time that would render someone unconscious, brought the side of her right hand down hard across in a chop at the back of his wide neck. The man lost his focus on torturing Donna at the distraction of her yell and slight pain of the blow, but, other than that, it didn't really…um…do anything. Instead, he wheeled around with surprising speed, grabbing ahold of both of Shar's arms and shoving her back forcefully against the wall behind her. _So I guess that doesn't work in real life, then…_

"Yeah, you would defend her, wouldn't you… _fan_," The man hissed at Sharada, pinning her against the wall.

"Get the hell off me…" Sharada struggled in fury against his sturdy grip and impending weight, twisting and trying anything she could think of to free herself of him.

"A fan, who knows so many random things… random, stupid, ordinary, trivial, and _useful_ things, aren't they?" As the man spoke, Sharada was dully aware that he was inside her head and stared determinedly back at him, intensely trying to block him from doing so. She didn't care if he knew a lot of that crap, but there were some things that, no, she wasn't going to give in to easily revealing. She gave a sharp gasp as a sudden piercing shock ran through her head, screwing her eyes against the intense pain of it.

At the exact same moment as Sharada heard a blunt whacking thud, the torturous sensation ended. She looked in front of her to see the stocky man release his grip on her, crumpling suddenly to the carpeted floor, and Donna Noble having obviously just clubbed him one to the head with Sharada's laptop, holding it, still inside the beaded macramé bag, in her hands like a bat.

"Well that does." Donna said, sort of half-shrugging and smiling slightly in a triumphant 'oh…it did work' way as she watched the man quickly recoil limply. He was alive, obviously, but barely conscious.

Sharada quickly stepped away from the wall, smiling very FTW-ly at Donna, as she took back her bag and laptop.

"So now's the 'run like hell before he gets up' part?" Sharada gave another glance down at the man, who gave a light groan, but still wasn't moving.

"You've got that right… _fan_," Donna added cheekily, ducking slightly under the door, a few more inches than Sharada, who was 5'6, did.

_Shut up_, Sharada thought back in a very un-serious way to the 'fan' comment as they entered the large room. It was all very blank white, dark chocolate brown, and carpet cleaner dull light grey, with wall-to-wall shag carpeting.

"You know I can hear that?" Donna said, coming past a stationary K9 as they came through the circular-square room.

"Yeah, I know, why do you think I thought it like that?" Sharada glanced lightly at K9 for a moment, not really pissed at him or anything for shooting the Doctor, since he was being controlled, but leaving him there in the room, all the same, as they ran, taking the left fork in the hallway.


	5. Surrender

The hallway was long and bent around a few corners before it forked again. It was a total toss up here, since before they'd taken the direction which they thought they'd heard the pair of footsteps exiting into.

"Did you get anything, when you were reading his head?" Sharada asked.

"No, just a number… three four ten. I thought it could be a room number, but nothing here's marked…" Donna looked down at the few small white wooden doors down the hallway to their right.

"Ten? Well the Doctor's the 10th Doctor… I dunno, it could be a code for something?" Sharada considered as they took the right fork, seeing as it had a couple of doors along the hallway and the left didn't yet. "Like a password or a door lock… or… food?" The four-digit produce codes at the grocery store she used to work at as a cashier at came immediately to mind. She still remembered some of those stupid things.

"The 10th Doctor? What d'you mean, 'the tenth'? Like it's a title that got passed down, or he's the tenth person to do it?" Donna asked Sharada, curiously surprised.

"It's his tenth body; he regenerates when he dies… you didn't know this?" Sharada was surprised, herself, that Donna didn't know this.

"Well I knew he's like, 900, but bloody _immortal_… And he's had me worried he could be dead, before!" Donna had a look of 'I am so going to kill him for not telling me this!' written on her face.

"Well, not immortal, he _can_ die, for good, and if he regenerates it's into a totally different person…it's still _him_, with all of his memories and everything, but different, yeah. Oh, I should _really_ show you the outfits his past selves have worn… some of them are horrible, especially this one coat..." Sharada laughed slightly as an image of the Sixth Doctor came to mind. "How long've you been traveling with him, anyways?"

"A little while, I guess. Before here, the last place we went to was India... I dunno, did that 'air' or whatever? Do you know about India?" Donna asked, wondering what of their adventures that Shar did and didn't know.

"Sort of, 1940's India, right? It wasn't an episode, it was a book, but I don't know what happened in it at all, cuz I haven't read it yet... hopefully I'll get it for Christmas." So, she had no idea, what point in series four that they were coming from, really. They were about mid-way through it in Canada... Oh well. A burning question came to mind now that they were sort of kind of on the subject. Well, sort of, in a 'not really, but if I've got the chance, I'm going to ask it anyways, damn it, because I WANT it to be cannon' type of way. "I'm kind of…_hugely_…a shipper of you two, so… so, have you and him, on the TARDIS…?"

She looked at Donna, curiously. She said nothing, but her expression read everything, and Donna knew she wasn't going to get anything past a fan this fanatically dedicated.

"I knew it!" Sharada lit up. Before even meeting them, she'd pretty much officially read too much Ten/Donna fanfic to believe that they were not secretly shagging like minks in-between adventures.

"Fine, yes, we have." Donna admitted, and not the least bit regretful about it. Her and the Doctor, they were just bloody _good_. And the oral… he was fucking _fantastic_ at that…

"I bet he's _really_ good with his tongue…" Sharada couldn't help say; she'd had a thought for a while now that he'd probably be really great in oral sex, what with his tongue always doing stuff…

"Incredible," Donna nodded hugely. "…the things he can do, and the sex itself… hot."

"Lucky," the fan grinned. "Wonder if he'll fuck me, if I stay around long enough..." Sharada said, dreamily lustful as she imagined this, picturing him and herself… it was no secret that she was incredibly attracted to the Tenth Doctor. She wasn't going to go all crazy stalker and pounce on him or anything, she wasn't like that, but horny, lusty, and attracted, yes. And in some psychic nut's rigged up house where for no known reason Donna had psychic powers also and the Doctor's been stunned and taken to some unknown location, that too.

Putting aside discussing the Doctor's, er… talents… for the moment, Shar and Donna entered through the first of the white doors in the brown shag carpeted hallway. This room was floor to floor thick brown shag as well, though smaller than the original room they'd left, and gave the appearance of being a den-type space, holding some antique-looking deep brown wooden furniture, one of which happened to be a desk near to a curtained bay window.

Intending to get a glance at the outside of wherever they were and take a look through the drawer of the simplistic desk, they treaded quickly on the carpet, alongside a long bare table.

"DEE BA DEE BA DEE DEE DOU DOU DEE BA DIDDI DOU..."

"What the hell?" Shar whipped around in surprise at the sudden blare of a really familiar song. She couldn't see a speaker anywhere. "Where's it coming from?"

"... DIDI DIDLDILDIDILDDIDLE HOUDIHOUDI DEY DOU..."

Donna, looking around as well, settled on one spot.

"The floor" She said, feeling around one spot through the 3 or 4 inches thick of carpet near them. "It's at least 2000-something with that song, no one has this much shag anymore… they're probably hiding it all under the rugs." She came across a flat, round speaker shape that the brown shag carpet had been laid on top of.

Though they knew where it was coming from, there was still kinda the problem that it was still playing… loudly.

"..DEE BA DEE BA DEE DEE DOU DOU DEE BA DIDDI DOU..."

"Hamster Dance alarm?" Shar laughed slightly…cuz that was just _such_ the thing she'd ever expect to hear blaring out as an intruder alert.

Donna was laughing as well that, out of all freaking things to blast out of a speaker as an alarm, they'd used the _Hamster Dance_.

"It's not very threatening, is it?" Donna commented… still, it _was_ an alarm, which meant that someone knew they were in here.

As they heard a single pair of approaching footsteps running down the hallway outside, clanking much the same way that the two lighter men's had, they exited into an adjoining door not far from the table, shutting the door to that one just as soon as the den's door was slammed open by the man.

"Bloody _shuffle _setting…" They heard him say towards the speaker as he turned it off with a flick of a tiny black remote. He sighed. "Well I know you're in here somewhere…migh' 'swell come out while ya still can."

As they stood batedly in the adjoining room, which was probably the room which the second door in the hallway lead to, an idea struck Sharada. It was totally a really stupid thing to do, they could just escape back out of this one to the hallway and run for it again, but…

"What are you doing?" Donna asked quietly, slightly pulling back on Sharada as she noticed she took a step towards the door which lead to the henchman.

"Finding the Doctor." Sharada whispered, turning back towards her.

"How is you turning us in going to help find him?" She asked, skeptically. This sounded like either the beginning of either the stupidest plan on the planet, or something brilliant, depending on what the fan was up to.

"Because I'm not going to turn _us_ in," Sharada explained, then made to move towards the door again. "Keep reading my mind." She whispered, about to turn the door handle, and slipped Donna back the bag.

"And follow you…?" Donna realized the plan. She probably wouldn't be able to get the info out of any of the men without them knowing like that one did before, but Sharada was no problem to read, she practically made it easy sometimes.

Sharada nodded. "Good luck."

"You too."

With that, Sharada slipped out of the door, shutting it behind her.

"Okay, I give up." Sharada announced, trying to sound very much as if she really had given up and had no plan of any kind.

"I thought there were two've ya?" The man, revealed to be sort of average sized, with sandy blonde hair and a rustic tan, wearing something that looked very Indiana Jones, asked puzzledly upon seeing just the one. "He said there'd been two people."

"Yeah, there is two, it was me and the Doctor, and you already have him." Sharada faked, wanting to obviously keep him from knowing that there was still Donna. "There _was_ someone else, but she wasn't touching K9 when he brought us here, so she's still back in the 60's." She further elaborated.

"Ah, guess that's it, then." He gruffly held Sharada's hands together behind her back, deciding that she must've just been the only one. He pulled out a small gun-like object and made to point it at her.

"You don't have to do that," Sharada stiffened, seeing the instrument. It was also sort of her plan to be able to _consciously_ relay things back to Donna. "I'll come willingly."

"An' why should you be so willing t' come?" He gave her a wary look.

"Well, because you've got me trapped here in this room with no escape, and you obviously overpower me, and, if I'm going to be totally honest here," She said composedly, then dropped her voice to a pointed wisper. "I really wouldn't mind seeing the Doctor again."

"Who says I'm going ta be takin' you to where he's at?" The man asked her suspiciously.

"I'm your prisoner… don't you take us all to the same spot?" Sharada pointed out. "Some basement-turned-dungeon-lab thing?"

"Like Aldabra would be so predictable! A basement lab, where'd you get that from?" He said almost mockingly. "'Tis no finer man to work for then the great Aldabra Se-"

"_Yeah, 'no finer man' who fucking tortured_… me." Sharada furiously snarled sarcastically, but caught herself. It was partly true that he'd done that to her, too, but not for near as many times as the name she'd almost said. "So what makes Aldabra so great to work for? Cuz you could be a henchman for anyone," She said, acting in a bit of a flirty way, saying it as if she were complementing him on his brawn and prowess, though it disgusted her to do so, "Why'd you choose him?"

Now that she'd got part of the burly guy in charge's name, she might was well fish for as much other information as she could. She knew Donna could still hear them from here as well.

"I like ta dream big, why jus' work for some petty bank robbery when Al's planned to offer all've-" He cut himself off, remembering that he might not be supposed to be revealin' Aldabra's goal to her, 'specially if she was in league with the key to the ploy. "I think we've talked enough, here."

Taking no chances, he pulled the trigger on the stunning ray that he'd pointed at Sharada, and she felt herself instantly fall easily asleep. As the girl crumpled loosely, unconscious, he carried her out of the room, into the hallway, and to wherever he was going to take her.


	6. Leviosa

_Time_. Donna had heard it though Sharada hadn't. He'd been practically screaming it in his head before stopping himself from saying it aloud, she didn't even have to try to read his mind. _All've time_…Aldabra Sequoia (yes, she'd also heard his full name before Shar, who, for all her appearance of a crazy fangirl, Donna was really quite admiring, had started going off on the so-far-nameless henchman) had promised all of time to the men.

_And to get 'all of time'… what else, try to kidnap a Time Lord._ She figured.

Standing close to the door between herself and the action, Donna was still locked on Shar's thoughts… which now went from an ominous 'oh shit' to a faint muddled unfocus as the sound of a small blaster, like K9's, but not quite, was heard on Sharada's side. She guessed this meant Sharada had been shot unconscious… well… ok… that was so much for Sharada actually being able to give directions. She'd still be able to follow them the regular way, though.

Upon hearing the hallway-leading door in the other room shut and the man's footsteps echo out of it, Donna rushed quietly to the other door, which lead into the hallway, and stopped just before it, listening with bated anticipation at which direction he was going. The clanky booted footsteps of the rustic man grew louder, but thankfully he bypassed this door. She was waiting until he got a little further away… entered another room or turned a corner or something, anytime he wouldn't be able to see her. After all of perhaps a 30 second wait, another doorknob down the hall twisted open and the door shut with a soft bang, the footsteps no longer heard.

She cautiously peered into the hallway, then stepped out onto its vast brown shag. There was a third white wooden door with a gold-colored handle about half a yard down; she went for it. Twisting the handle quietly when she was sure that the man wasn't going to be directly on the other side of it, she opened the door into yet another ordinary-sized room. An ordinary sized room which contained a completely unfamiliar brunette woman, older than herself, bound flat to a table-slab-thing.

Stepping closer to the unconscious woman, Donna curiously placed a hand atop the woman with banged, shoulder-length brown hair's heart… she wasn't a Time Lord… well the Doctor did say he was the last, but still, she'd thought for a moment, maybe, if they were wanting to build up a collection of Time Lords or something... but who the hell was she?

Whoever she was, her eyes, revealed to be a hazel-brown, fluttered open at Donna's touch.

-------

_Somewhere else in the building…_

"…Sharada…"

She could dimly hear that someone was saying her name, blending into her dream as sounds sometimes do right before whatever was making the sound wakes you up.

"Sharada… Shar?"

She groaned tiredly, not quite opening her eyes yet. For a second she expected to be waking up on her own bed at home, this entire thing having been some wonderful adventure of a Doctor Who dream (and being very much disappointed that it wasn't real)…but it wasn't, she _knew_ that voice, and it was no longer coming from her dreams, but still was there as she awakened. It was the first thing she saw as she blearily opened her eyes, looking to the side which her head had naturally fallen to; her right.

"Doctor," Her heart leapt with joy. So they _were_ in the same place… ok, both apparently incarcerated to separate table-slab-things about six inches apart, yeah, she knew the whole 'waking up strapped/tied/locked to something' bit was probably coming, but both together. She smiled in relief. "Oh thank god!"

"Is that 'thank god' you're happy to see me, or 'thank god' you've come up with some plan that would've only worked if we were in the same place?" He asked her, a sort of knowing expression on his face as he looked at her.

"Both." She admitted in slight squee, cuz she was obviously incredibly happy that, the crappy circumstance of being splayed out and tied down like a frog on a dissection tray be damned, she was actually with the Doctor. "And I do have a plan…kinda, cuz for some reason Donna's kind of psychic, and..."

Sharada broke off. She noticed something as she went to, out of habit, crack one of the joints in her left hand…she couldn't.

"I can't move… why can't I move… why the hell can't I move?!" Sharada asked, a huge tinge of panic in her voice as she, growing more panicky by the second, struggled, unsuccessfully, to move any of her legs and arms. She could move anything else in her body, but her limbs wouldn't budge. Well yes, they were bound to the table with large metal straps, but the free parts wouldn't move or tense or anything, as if every muscle in them had ceased to work.

"Oh, you've noticed," The Doctor could see the alarm running through Sharada's green eyes. "It's the straps, they paralyze-"

"I'm paralyzed?!" She interrupted, distress flooding through her as she heard that word.

"Just… temporarily, only for as long as you're in them." He said further, assuring her.

"Oh, ok," A calm settled in Sharada at hearing this, going quickly from unease to an exited dramatic bouncy feeling, still squeeing at the fact that all of this was real. Her head flopped back over to his direction. "This is so weird… it's great, but… you and her and K9 and everything, it's…" Sharada made another one of those high pitched sounds that she did a lot at home whenever something made her squee a lot, like when certain trailers for a movie or show she really wanted to see would come on TV, or when a ship of hers finally snogged. She couldn't help it, she just was _that_ excitable over stuff.

"You're just going to keep doing that, aren't you?" He said, in response to the…what was it, the, the third? Fourth?…squeal of pure fan squee that he'd heard Sharada make since he met her not that long ago.

"Yeaahh…probably," Sharada answered shruggingly, her eyes aglow with an eager spark. "Ugh, this is so _annoying_." She said, indicating the bonds. "Totally exiting, yeah, but I can't wait to get out of these. Can you move… at all, or more than me, or…?" She wondered.

"You're Canadian! 'Out'," He repeated the word slightly like she'd said it (though she thought he really just sounded Scottish when he tried to say something with a Canadian accent) in an amused way. "You know I don't think I've ever had a Canadian on the TARDIS before, an American once, but being 'out' and 'about' with someone from Canada… you're a first, Sharada Storm!"

"Do I really have that huge of an accent?" Sharada asked with a laugh. She'd been told once before by a friend from a club she belonged to for a bit at University that she did.

"Kind of, yeah." He agreed with a nod.

"I wish I had a British one… I can do a fake British one, kinda, you wanna hear? It's all Harry Potter, but…" Sharada proceeded to put on her best Hermione, facial expressions and all. " 'No, no, no, you're _going_ to put someone's eye out,' " She continued, ignoring how obviously fake it sounded, " 'And you're saying it _completely_ wrong, it's Levi-_oh_-sa, not Levio-_sa_. Observe," She gave a small fake cough, her tone trying to match that of the scene in Philisopher's Stone, though she wasn't really sure if she had all of the lines exactly correct. "Win_gar_dium Levi_o_sa!"

When she was finished, Shar's gaze met the Doctor's again (who she thought probably must think she was nuts) and she continued in a fake English accent (though less Hermione-ish now). "Well, what d'you think? Was it 'out' and 'about' in a 'boot' for you, Docta?"

"Very good, " He grinned. "Lots better than my attempt at your accent, I bet."

"I've had practice... _way _too much practice at doing that," Sharada laughed.

The Doctor's eye caught onto a gleam of silver from across the room, his expression changing, suddenly.

"Say that again," He said, to the fan.

"Say what again? The whole thing?" Shar asked, curious.

"No, no just the 'Wingardium Leviosa'," He told her, his gaze still on the object.

"Aright, Wingardium Leviosa," She repeated, with an air of confusion about her, eyeing him as if she wanted to know why exactly he'd wanted her to say that.

He was not looking at her though, instead in the direction of the coat piled atop the workbench, where he could have sworn he'd just seen…

The Doctor shook his head, glancing shortly back to Sharada.

"Not like that, say it like you did before, with feeling, as if you're actually trying to make something levitate," He told her.

"Oh, ok, _Wingardium Leviosa_!" Sharada said again, putting as much effort into it as she could. "But why?"

"Look over there," The Doctor indicated towards the workbench, his face in slight amazement. Shar looked at where he'd been looking, for once. Hovering no less than two feet overtop of the wooden workbench in this dank basement-garage of a room was the Sonic Screwdriver. She gasped sharply, surprised at what she was seeing.

"Holy shit. But I'm _not_ a witch," Sharada said, in incredulous awe. "I mean, alright, _you're_ real, but Harry Potter too…? That's kinda a bit much, isn' it?"

"Well, neither's Heroes or X-men, but you said Donna can read minds," The Doctor said. "You're right though, that's not magic, it's something else, something…"

"It is alien?" Sharada supplied, trying to sound Welsh, and a bit like Gwen Cooper, as she said it. She wondered for a brief second about meeting the Torchwood crew as well, not that she wanted to work for Torchwood, but she'd like to meet them, especially Jack.

"Could be," He said with a shrugging tone as, much like Sharada, he couldn't actually shrug, though he could move a bit more than she could, yeah. "Definitely could be something alien."

'Well whatever it is, lucky I'm a fan of a billion things, so… _Accio!!_" Sharada cried in Goblet of Fire style, though a bit quieter than Harry Potter had. _Speaking of Goblet of Fire… _a sly smile crept across Sharada's face, cocking her head suspiciously at the Doctor, who she watched catch the erratically summoned sonic screwdriver with his teeth.

As he fiddled with the settings with his tongue, Sharada wondered what Donna was doing, since she felt like she'd been here a bit long, but she wasn't worried that she'd been caught out; knowing her, Shar guessed that Donna'd probably found something out about what the heck this was all about.


	7. Connection

"It's alright, I'm not with them," Donna, at seeing the bound brunette's look of shock as she awoke, assured her. A mixture thoughts accidentally flooded from the woman's mind into Donna's, particularly, her name. "… You're Sarah Jane Smith. You know the Doctor, too."

Sarah Jane stared at the unfamiliar redhead, wondering how she knew this.

"Sorry; I'm sort of… psychic at the moment," Donna said, apologetically. "Not usually, just today for some reason. Are you alright?"

"As good as I can be, for waking up tied up in a building somewhere," Sarah Jane answered briskly. "Who are you?" She asked her.

"Donna. I'm with the Doctor, sort of in the middle rescuing him and a girl named Sharada, right now," Donna said. "What do those men want with you, anyways? Cos you're not even from here," she had assumed, by the accents of both of the men she had heard speak, that they were somewhere in America, right now.

"Same thing as always; I know too much," Sarah Jane answered, beginning to explain how she got to be in the situation that she was. "I'm a journalist, I investigate things… especially weird, unexplainable things, and I got a lead on these reports of people going missing for a few days, then turning up later, mostly fine, but with chunks of their memories missing, usually things to do with security protocols and invention blueprints. I thought it could be alien, so I came across the pond to check it out. Didn't even get far enough to find out what that man wanted, before he shot me and stole my dog."

"Your dog?" A thought flashed through Donna's mind, of the metal dog that had brought them here. "K9's yours?"

"Yes; the Doctor gave him to me." She answered. With the aid of Mr. Smith, she'd modified the tin dog to teleport a while ago, since he usually guarded a black hole, but occasionally, on instances like this, she needed his assistance. "There's a paralyzing current coming from these bonds, I can't move… Could you get my sonic lipstick out of my pocket?"

"You've got a _sonic _lipstick?" Donna quickly reached to the pocket that Sarah Jane had indicated. "Who looks at a tube of lipstick and thinks 'this could be _sonic_'? Wait, don't tell me, the Doctor gave it to you, didn't he?"

Sarah Jane nodded, with a laugh.

"Bit more inconspicuous than a screwdriver, isn't it?" Donna held the gold-colored device in her hand, admirationally. "He should give me one, one of these days… so how do you work it? Just point and press?"

---

With the usual hum of the sonic screwdriver, the metal bonds which strapped and immobilized the Doctor and Sharada to their respective tables snapped open, looking a bit like robot hands from a cheesy sci-fi. In the space of about a second, the Doctor had bounded off of it, dropping the sonic screwdriver into his hand.

Sharada, on the other hand, managed to sit up well enough, but flopped clumsily back down, finding her arms, and apparently legs as well, still annoyingly immobile, even though she was free of the thick clasps.

"Doctor…" She said, totally as luck would have it. "Still can't really move …what, were you just _guessing_ at how long it lasted?" Sharada smiled with a slight roll of her eyes in spite of the situation.

"Kind of, well, not really, it should of, it…I guess it's different with each person." He admitted, running a hand though his hair as he come over to the other side of the tables, towards her, helping her up. "What about now? Any better?"

Sharada nodded.

"Thanks, for getting us out of those." She said, starting to be able to move her limbs normally again and held to him, getting off the slab unsteadily. As she stood for a second, she noticed that they were standing in _that_ way, with his hands around the back of her waist supportively, it was very kind of…well, she'd seen it before, anyways, in the show.

"I know, New Earth," He said, his eyes catching her sudden look. "But you _really_ have to stop squeeing over every little thing I do. I mean not that it's not totally flattering, but…well imagine hiding out from some alien with you. Actually, that might be a fair match with some species," the Doctor noted with a raised eyebrow. "…that fan shriek of yours would probably knock them out flat."

"Or I could just 'Stupefy' them…what's _up_ with that anyways?" Sharada asked, indicating the spells she'd cast earlier that had worked. "Like, what if I tried..." She cast around in her head for a spell and fixed her eyes in the direction of a door. "_Alohamora_. Did that work?"

She rushed towards the door and tried the handle; it opened with ease. Sharada turned to the Doctor, beaming with enthusiasm.

"Oh my God, it _did_ work!" She shrieked ecstatically, her eyes wide. " 'Alohamora' and it unlocked!"

"It wasn't locked." The Doctor took a look at the regular metallic knobs on each side of the door. "These kind _don't _lock. Sorry, but you didn't do anything to it." He told her.

Sharada took another look at the doorknobs as well, and remembered how none of the ones upstairs (_was_ it 'upstairs' where they'd been before? She wondered. She didn't really know, but it felt like it could be) were locked, either.

"Oh." She said, slightly disappointed.

"It's telekinetic, what you did with the levitating and summoning the sonic screwdriver. The words _really_ just meant nothing, it was the thought behind them." He said.

"Telekinetic…that's cool." Sharada smiled approvingly. If she'd somehow gotten the ability to move objects with her mind, she was totally ok with that. "So it's like half of Jean Grey, cuz I'm not really telepathic, not like Donna… don't those usually go together? Why's it split between us?"

As the Doctor and Sharada walked into whichever room the doorway lead to (a corridor…_of course_, thought Sharada), the Doctor shrugged as to the question of why the telepathic/telekinetic thing was split, and turned to her.

"I think the big question is why either of you can even do it at all. I'd say it could be something in this house, maybe the gas when we first got here, but I have a feeling that it wasn't just a lucky guess that Donna could tell you were from 2008 back in the street…" He said. "The thing is though, that you _shouldn't_ be able to do that-"

"I think we're past 'shouldn't' and into _can_ and _am_." Sharada said, mentally hovering some wooden debris near them in the air. "And I like it, I mean everybody wants to have superpowers, and here I am all 'save the cheerleader, save the world'." She let the woodshop scraps drop to the ground again, pausing suddenly with a curious expression on her face. "It's not dangerous, right? It's not going to be all like those things where something's giving people these special abilities, but it's really also making them sick…is it?"

The Doctor hesitated. _Was it_?

"That depends." He said, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Depends on what?" Sharada asked.

"On how two different people, from completely different places, suddenly started being able to read thoughts or move objects like they were comic book heroines," the Doctor said, then looked at her seriously. "Do you mind?"

"Mind what?" She asked, though she could tell from a look in his eyes what he meant. "No, it's fine, go ahead."

He took his hands from Sharada's shoulders to the sides of her face.

"Day Tripper?" the Doctor said, noticing the song that ran through her head, which surprised Sharada a slight bit.

"Hm?" She could feel him, in her head, looking for something. _Crap, this is all a bit 'Reniette' now isn't it…I mean she's alright, I don't mind her, and there was the whole fancying each other thing, but I don't exactly want to be that…yeah the snogging and 'dancing' thing, that'd be great, because I would like that, not that I think it's going to happen, but, if it did…but I don't want to be just a 'random blonde' he fancies and never sees again, I'm not a 'random blonde', am I? I'm not even blonde, I…Crap, you're hearing this all, aren't you?_

Sharada felt her face get hot. Leave it to her to start thinking of something totally stupid at the exact time when she shouldn't be…

"I'm really not." He told her. It was a slight lie; he knew she was thinking about Reniette for some reason, but anything else in that spurt of thought was concealed by a door only about as thick as a winnebago screen.

A voice, which was neither her own, nor the Doctor's, filled her mind, suddenly.

_They're actually coming open! Wow… I always thought it'd be harder to sonic something, well, he makes it look easy enough, it had to be…_

"What was that?" Sharada said suddenly, she'd heard it as clear as anything, in her head, as if she were hearing one half of a conversation that Donna was having with somebody else.

C_an she move? yeah, I think she can, now…_

They both looked at each other, the Doctor actually more surprised by this than Sharada.

"You sure you're doing this right?" Sharada asked, uncertainly. Why the bloody hell was she able to hear whatever Donna was thinking (or saying? It was hard to tell, really)…wherever she was?

"As much as I can be, yeah…it might've, oh." The Doctor realized, looking at her with a sudden comprehension. Sharada's mind was an open line right now, and Donna was telepathic right now, _of course_. "Oh…well that _is_ something."

_Donna? Donna, can you hear this? Where are you?_ The Doctor thought, pointedly, whilst still inside of Sharada's head. To his slight surprise, he got a reply.

_Doctor? Where are _you_? Oh you'll never believe who I just found, and she says the dog's hers …and how are you doing this? _Both the Doctor and Sharada heard Donna think back.

_Through Sharada, and I know. Look, where _are_ you and Sarah Jane? Because we're down in… oh, a basement? Yeah, looks like a basement… with corridors… can never seem to get away from those. _The Doctor continued.

_Through Sharada? And weird thing is that's not actually the strangest thing I've heard today… how is she? Found you, I take it? Oh, I still have her bag, by the way. _Donna responded.

_Yes, she did, and she's fine… and a bit telekinetic at the moment. Look, we'll meet you two up there… if we can ever find the stairs, that is…_

With that, the Doctor eased out of his look into Sharada's mind, breaking their three-way connection, which Sharada was sort of glad of, as, though she'd found it interesting and pretty cool, having two people using her as an intercom was starting to give her a headache.

"You know, I'm really good at getting lost in places like this," Sharada said, after they'd come into yet another corridor. "But they had to bring us down here somehow…it's not like they _apparated_ or something."

Up ahead, she spotted half a dozen large white boxes lined up along two walls. Glancing at the Doctor, she pointed to them, getting a foreboding feeling about them.

"Great…loads of freezers, in a nut's basement. Cuz you know that's _really_ reassuring." She said in a sarcastic unease.

As they got to them, the Doctor paused. He looked to Sharada, then down at one of the large white chests, which, being as it was on, emitted a low hum.

"Only one of them's on." He said, his hand resting on the lid of what, in Sharada's mind anyways, may as well be a frozen casket.

"Well then they've killed one person so far, come on." Sharada's unwant to see someone iced like something out of a forensic show was quickly outweighing any kind of curiosity at the moment. She cringed slightly, seeing as the Doctor had moved his hand from the lid to near the handle. "Oh, you're not going to _open_ it, are you?"

"Have to, it could be someone I know," He said importantly, lifting open the lid.

As the contents were revealed, Sharada balked, an expression of disgusted horror on her face.

"Or…someone _I_ know." She said finally, breathing fastly. The woman in the freezer was older, about forty years older than before, but she knew that face, the once peaceful almond Hershey bar eyes now glazed in an expression of betrayal and anguish, her honey brown locks matted with frost. Sharada was too shocked to cry, but she felt she would, soon. She'd never actually seen a dead body up close and personal, before, and especially not anybody she'd ever met. "Seych…"

The dams broke as Sharada laid a hand against Seychelle's skin. It was frigid and hard to the touch, no sign of life at all. She felt the Doctor's hand slip into her own.

"Who is she?" He asked, his other arm finding a way around Sharada in a comforting embrace.

"Seychelle Sequoia…she was a street vendor, in the 60's. I barely knew her, only for a few minutes…but she was nice. She was a complete hippie, it was awesome. She might've been a bit psychic, I dunno, and she gave me one of her…" Sharada suddenly paused; everything was clicking together. She looked up at the Doctor, a look of realization in her eyes. "Doctor, I know why Donna and I have superpowers."


	8. Day Tripper

"…Because that's it, what is the _one_ new thing that me, Donna, and Seychelle have _all_ been around since that street in the 60's… the bag!" Sharada continued, "There's something about the bag that's doing this, I dunno what, but… and there's something, some old show, this Gilligan's Island episode I saw on TV Land when I was eight or something, where everyone starts being able to read each other's minds because of these berries they're eating. What if something like that's in the bag?"

"You're… kind of good at this." The Doctor said, impressed, to which Sharada shrugged, feeling complemented of course, but still a bit gutted.

"It's what I do, I'm a fan, I come up with these kinds of things all the time. It's not a big deal if I figure out one thing," She told him. "Anyone would've… you would've ages ago if you'd been there with us the whole time."

"Oh, yeah, totally would've." He agreed asidely, then looked ahead intently for a second at something in the dim basement hallway.

"Oh crap… what is it now?" Sprung to Sharada's mind immediately at the thought of anybody seeing anything up ahead right after they'd just found a body in the freezer… not to mention the five _spare_ freezers that were apparently just hanging around waiting to get put to use.

"I found the _stairs_," The Doctor said, nudging her and pointing towards a steel door at the end of the hallway. "You really just jump to conclusions a lot, don't you."

"Well my conclusions have a way of being _right_." Sharada reminded him as they hurried towards that direction.

----

_Earth… obviously. And New York, also obvious._ _But what the hell is the date?_ _Not the 60's, anyway…2000? 2008?_ Donna looked out the small window in the hallway which the other door of the room she'd found Sarah Jane in lead to, pushing aside it's thick green and orange patterned curtains. The house looked like it belonged to someone who was just a bit too much obsessed with 'retro', but the street outside definitely did not. She wasn't an _expert_ on cars, but the ones down below that moved at a snail's pace in the thick traffic looked like anything she'd see back home. Except the yellow taxis, those were different…but just American ones, nothing important.

Sarah Jane, her sonic back in hand, took a glance out of the window as well.

"It's 2008, sometime in the spring, if you're wondering." She told Donna, knowing that not because of the scene outside, but because of the date it had been when she'd left England and arrived in New York that day.

"So how many things _have_ you been tied up to?" Donna asked her, getting a sense that this was a bit routine for people traveling with the Doctor…or hell, anyone who even _knew_ him at all. "Cos I've got a running total of about 3 so far…"

"Too many to even remember." Sarah Jane said knowingly, "Have you got to the part where some alien race decides they'd like to possess you? Cos that's always lovely."

As Sarah Jane gave a sarcastic roll of her eyes, Donna shook her head, not coming up with anything that she knew of, anyways.

"Was almost fed to a pack of giant spiders living in the center of the earth though," Donna admitted.

"_Always_ with the giant spiders!" Sarah Jane exclaimed in an incredulous burst. "The ones we ran into ended up poisoning my first Doctor in the end…"

"Your 'first' Doctor? How many different regenerations of him did you go through, anyways?" Donna asked her as they rounded a turn in the hallway.

"Oh, well I've known him in three different forms," Sarah Jane thought of how to explain which ones she knew when. "Met him in his…3rd self, I think, then he regenerated into his 4th…huge scarf, that one had, I mean I'm surprised he wasn't always tripping over it, it was like twelve feet long! And then…then I met him again as he is now, his 10th, but I never went with him though, just the one thing on Earth at that school. The one that blew up about two years ago, have you heard of it?"

She hadn't, or if she had seen it once in the headlines a while back, she'd forgotten. But that didn't matter though, not right now, she was onto something.

"His 3rd, 4th, and 10th…? As in three four ten?" Donna realized.

"I guess it is, why?" Sarah Jane asked her, curiously.

"It's just when I read Aldabra's mind for a second, there were these numbers, 3, 4, 10… what if that's something to do with the Doctors you've known? Because this whole thing," Donna continued. "It's all about the Doctor. Aldabra apparently wants something to do with time… maybe he wants to travel in time, and how do you get a time machine… abduct a Time Lord and read his mind!"

"I can see why he likes you." Sarah Jane said, as to Donna's figuring out a lot of what might be going on.

From somewhere up ahead and around a short bend, a noise was heard, a muffled yell of someone shouting something. They both paused to listen, wondering if it could be the Doctor and Sharada or if it were Aldabra and his men.

"I told you shouting 'Alohamora' at things doesn't actually _work_. If you wanted to blow it off the hinges then just-" A voice, obviously the Doctor's, broke off. "No, don't _actually_ blow it off the hinges!"

"You just said to!" The second voice, now recognizable as Sharada's, protested at being stopped from trying to send the door at the top of the stairs flying.

"I said if you were _going to_, not let's make a huge lot of noise and draw attention to ourselves when we don't have to."

"I think the two of you are _already_ making a lot of noise, Doctor." Donna called towards the door, glad it was them.

"Doctor!?" Sarah Jane tore around the corner after Donna.

"I wasn't just going to _throw_ it, I know what I'm doing!" They heard Sharada say again.

Instead, before either of them opened it, telekinetically or otherwise, Donna reached it and wrenched it open. Like apparently every other door in this place, it wasn't locked. She spotted the Doctor, who was closest, and engulfed him in a hug.

"I actually thought they'd killed you, for a second." Donna told him. She then pulled back and held him at arm's length, looking a mix of astounded and gleeful. "But you _can't_ die! You just keep coming back, looking different!"

"It's…not…quite like that, I'll explain later," The Doctor said, pulling her in again as he winced slightly at what was most likely either Sharada or Sarah Jane's almost-but-not-quite explanation of regeneration. Speaking of Sharada, he recalled something he'd seen in Sharada's mind, a recent memory that floated to the top along with all of the other things that had happened since being here. Caringly, looked at her, an expression of almost guilt in his eyes. "So what exactly did he do to you?"

"That? Oh, that was nothing, really… totally nothing." She assured. A 'nothing' that had hurt like almost 'nothing' else, but it didn't matter, she was fine, and so was he… at the moment, anyways, she knew they still weren't finished with this place quite yet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sharada. "Oh she is _loving_ this! Me and you, close… she's a shipper!" Donna said to the Doctor in great amusement of this. "I know! Personally I don't see it, _but_…" Donna raised a quipping eyebrow, shrugging.

Looking past Donna for a second, the Doctor noticed Sarah Jane and moved towards her as Donna turned to Sharada.

"And you! Getting yourself captured!" She hugged Sharada, incredulously amazed that that plan had actually worked and Sharada'd found the Doctor as she said she would, because it was really really quite a stupid plan now that anyone thought about it. "What's this about you being telekinetic?" Donna asked, then paused, hearing something again. "Is that… that's David Cook's version, isn't it? From Beatles week on Idol."

"I thought you guys got Pop Idol in England?" Sharada was surprised to find that Donna, being from the UK, knew anything about the seventh season of the American version of Idol, since she, herself, knew absolutely nothing about _any _seasons of the English version.

"The telly on the TARDIS gets _everything_," Donna said. "You should see it, sometime."

A few feet away, the Doctor was beaming at Sarah Jane, who returned the smile.

"Sarah Jane Smith… It's great to see you again, well… not really in this house, but anyways, how've you been?" He glanced at the maze of the hallway in which they were in now. "Investigating, I take it?"

Before Sarah Jane could answer, the cold voice of Aldabra filled the air, and a pair of doors, directly across to the one that the Doctor and Sharada had just came out of, came open.

"Investigating far too much for her own good," The man, thick and beefy in width, but only about as tall as perhaps Donna, spoke. In his hands, he held a trembling K9. "K9, shoot your rightful mistress," Aldabra ordered, witheringly. "And this time, do make it lethal."


	9. All These Lives

Despite how much the tin dog tried to override Aldabra's controls, a red jet of light fired out of K9's blaster.

"No!" She didn't know what she was doing, exactly, only that she'd seen it on x-men, and, just before the beam could reach Sarah Jane, Sharada, flinging out her hand in a complete 'Jean Grey' style, wedged Sarah Jane out of the jet's path, intent on stopping it with whatever telekinetic prowess that she possessed at the moment.

The blast paused in midair, before it had hit anybody, stopping just short of her palm, as if held back by an invisible force.

"Woa… Anyone gonna help me on this? Cuz I don't know how long I can really hold it off for…" Sharada squeaked, still surprised that she was actually able to _do_ this. The beam inched closer to her, she could feel the warmth of it… now she _really_ wasn't sure how much longer she could stop it for.

The Doctor quickly pulled her aside, causing her to lose focus, and the jet flew in-between the space between them and Sarah Jane, crashing into, and singing, the frame of the door down to the basement.

"Oh, you _really_ don't want to shoot at us, especially not with K9," the Doctor turned to Aldabra, dangerously, stepping closer to him. He laid a hand on the robotic dog's snout. "I mean, look at him. He's scared!"

With a swift motion, the Doctor picked the trembling K9 up out of Aldabra's hands, and handed the dog back to his owner; Sarah Jane.

Sharada glared at Aldabra. She looked only a second away from doing something very Slyar to the man.

"But all of this is _nothing_ compared to what you did to that girl in the freezer downstairs," The Doctor continued, "Because I can get the kidnap, the tying up, even the torture, all for your 'great master plan'… but you killed your own sister. Because that's what she was, Seychelle Sequoia, your own flesh and blood, and you murdered her."

"_She was your SISTER?!_" An angered fury surged through her Sharada. Surprisingly, nothing accidentally telekinetic happened, just her first, ordinary, impulse, of her fist connecting square with the front of Aldabra's face.

He barely even blinked, which surprised her. For all her appearance and stature of an average chick of around eighteen or nineteen, Sharada Storm most definitely, with a blue belt in a branch of martial arts to her name during her high school years, did _not_ 'hit like a girl'. Instead of being injured in any way, his tough grip wrenched her hand, the second her fist had collided with his face, into a firm hold.

"Your _sister_? You murdered your own _sister_? What is it, you were jealous of her as a kid, she got all your parents' attention?" Donna, as enraged as everyone else in the room to hear this, looked to Aldabra. "Oi, we've got the dog, and I'm sure that after whatever you've done to him, he'd only be too happy to start shooting at _you_, so you're going to tell us what the _hell_ is going on that's made you start killing off your own family members!"

"You know, it is funny that you've all brought up my sister, when it was her memories that lead me to finding you three in the first place. A memory of you, in particular." Aldabra pointed to Donna.

"Me? But I didn't even talk to her, she might've seen me from a distance, but…" Donna said, slightly surprised, as she actually didn't even know what Seychelle even _looked_ like.

"Yes, it is odd how a little unexpected time jumping can change things," Aldabra said, his eyes flickering to K9 and then to Sharada. "But, before K9 ended up going to the wrong place and picking up _her_, Seychelle's original memory was of you, stopping by her stall, and getting, in fact, that very same bag." He reached to touch the large beaded bag hanging on Donna's shoulder, but she jerked it backwards before he could. "But then of course, by some extraordinary luck, a woman shows up with a metal dog that's been made able to teleport… and, even better, she knows, in her mind, of a man named the Doctor, a Time Lord, who not only travels through time, but has the knowledge of _how_ to. Imagine… all these decades of reading strangers' minds for their PIN numbers, passwords, alarm codes, and other simple blabber, and I realize that I could do that throughout _time_ if only I could get my hands on this 'Doctor'."

"And so you search through anyone you can find's mind until you stumble upon your sister meeting me and Donna in 1967, you program K9 to go there, only he, sensing something is up and trying to get out of it, accidentally picks up Sharada along the way, who ends up meeting Seychelle before we do, and, well… everything else, which all leads up to the fact that you _can't_." The Doctor said, summing up the rest of what Aldabra had most likely done. "You _can't_ read my mind like you can theirs, and that's not even anything to do with my being good with psychic sort of things." He slipped the bag off of Donna's shoulder, who, unlike with Aldabra, let him take it. "But it is because I'm a Time Lord, and the substance in the bead-like berries on this bag," The Doctor held up the bag, giving part of the beading a lick to be sure, "Only works on humans."

"But I can," Aldabra merely chuckled. "If not like that, there are many different ways… and in a moment when your heart breaks, you may find yourself complying. There is a reason, Doctor, why I have kept from killing these humans," He motioned out, in particular, both Donna, who stood in front of him, beside the Doctor, and Sharada, who he held roughly, "as I have my sister. Like Seychelle, and Sarah Jane, their knowledge is now of little use to me, but yet they are still alive…" Aldabra began.

At that moment, the two of Aldabra's men from before came from either side of the hallway, heaving a hold each on both Sarah Jane, on one side, and the Doctor, on the other.

"If you do _anything_ to _any_ one of them…" The Doctor, angrily, said towards Aldabra, struggling against the henchman's grasp.

"I'll teach you and your friends about pain…I'm going to kill them, just so you can hear them scream…_" _Putting on a horribly affected Irish accent, Aldabra's other hand came upon Donna, who struggled, but found she couldn't quite move as much as she wanted to…

"That'd be a lot more terrifying if it wasn't a direct rip from Charlie's Angels!" Sharada spat, furiously, at the man. "And you're shit at it, too!"

"…And the best part is, I don't even have to do it, this time…" Back to his regular, New York, accent, Aldabra's eyes gleamed with the possibility. He looked at Donna. "As much as you can do, so can I, and more… one flick and I can control you, pet… how much you can do, how much you can't do, and even," Like a twisted puppet master, he looked from Donna to Sharada, "who you do it _to_."


End file.
